


a city in a garden

by cold-mornings (hawthornss), stellaviatorii



Series: The Trans Marin Anthology [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir Identity Reveal, Alternate Universe - No Volpina, Alternate Universe - Trans, Bee Chloé Bourgeois | Queen Bee, Chloé Bourgeois Redemption, Fox Alya Césaire | Rena Rouge, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal, M/M, Marin Dupain-Cheng - Freeform, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Finds Out First, Mentions of Body Dysphoria, No Lila Rossi Redemption, Partial Identity Reveal, Past Alya Césaire/Marin Dupain-Cheng, Slow Burn, Time Skips, Trans Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Transitioning, Turtle Nino Lahiffe | Carapace, mild transphobia from minor characters later, transmasc author(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26716075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hawthornss/pseuds/cold-mornings, https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellaviatorii/pseuds/stellaviatorii
Summary: Adrien goes away to Marseille for a summer and, thanks to his father, doesn't come back for three years. When he finally returns, he realizes that Paris and her people have changed far more than he could have ever prepared for, and there are things that have been kept from him for reasons he doesn't understand.Marin very suddenly encounters the deepest of his buried emotional demons, and is forced to face them twice - as Ladybug, and as himself.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Series: The Trans Marin Anthology [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2195001
Comments: 6
Kudos: 59





	a city in a garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [stellaviatorii](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stellaviatorii/gifts).



> She says I smell like safety and home  
> I named both of her eyes forever and please don't go

During the second week of July, Adrien found out he was off to the south of France for the remainder of the summer holidays. He didn’t even hear it directly from his father; Nathalie slid a trip itinerary under his bedroom door one evening, and that was that. There he was, school barely over, and before he’d even really settled into having time off, his suitcase was open on his bedroom floor and he was texting his friends to tell them. There wouldn’t even be time to see then before he went.

He was really hoping he’d get to spend the summer differently for a change - the four of them had made loose plans to catch the train north, to Le Havre - to wander up and down the coastal strip for the day, and perhaps enjoy a beach that didn’t have a photography team involved. There was a little tourist brochure hidden in his desk drawer, forgotten now while he folded his clothes.

Adrien didn’t try to argue. There was no negotiating with his father, tall and imposing as he was. His will was absolute - if he said they were going to Marseille for summer, they were going. Adrien gave his vacation up for lost with very little fight.

When he let his friends know in their group chat, Nino posted a total of seventeen crying emojis in a row, and Alya swore a lot. Adrien promised to make it back to them when he returned in autumn. It didn’t make anyone feel any better. He sent sad Snapchats from the airport accompanied by a lot of grouching, and when they touched down in Marseille, he took a particularly glum photo of storm clouds over what was, really, an exceedingly beautiful port town.

“It’s only six weeks,” he told himself. Six weeks stuck on the southern coast, and then he’d be back in Paris with his friends in time to enjoy autumn, at least. Back in Paris with Ladybug. There had only been time to meet up with her once, the night before he left, and only for a moment. Despite the very few details he gave her, she had been very understanding. "I won't be alone," she reassured him with a smile. "I can always ask Rena Rouge or Carapace for a hand."

Chat Noir worried his belted tail between his palms as they said goodbye. "You'll let me know how things are going here while I'm gone? Send me a message now and then?"

Ladybug gave him a thumbs up over her shoulder, and waved her yoyo in reply.

So six weeks became an agonizing crawl through days of endless photoshoots, and nights alone in his hotel room. Adrien quickly realized he was sick of the beach after only three days spent on it, of the sand in all his belongings, and of the smell of the aloe-vera sunscreen he applied liberally after the scorching work hours. He’d already twice-read the two books he’d been able to fit in his tiny suitcase. He was bored out of his mind, and worried about Ladybug all alone in Paris. The little map on his staff's screen did not project far enough to see Paris. The messages she sent him were uneventful, though - the akumas had slowed down over the summer, it seemed, and she was mostly just bored, too.

_**LB:** don’t get lazy just because it’s summer!! you’d better still be in fighting shape when u get back >:O _

_**CN:** Not a lot of opportunities to get out here, I’m afraid. I’m cooped up inside. _

_**LB:** what kind of vacation is that?! _

_**CN:** A lousy one. I’ll try to get out tonight for some exercise, when everyone’s asleep. I’m going insane here. _  
  
_**LB:** don’t be seen!! it’d be bad if the press saw u away from paris. hawkmoth might decide it’s his chance to level the city or something :s_

_**CN:** I’ll be careful, my Lady. <3 _

There were no akumas in Marseille. Plagg had become used to leisure, and they only patrolled sporadically when Adrien could sneak out in the early hours of the morning. It was something to do, and it was nice to let go and sprint as fast as he could for a change, to exert himself and work the idleness from his limbs. Meanwhile, he kept giving the same non-committal answers to every interviewer thrust in front of him during the days, but nobody seemed to care much about what he said, so long as his newest shoot was on a screen nearby. He hoped the tabloids couldn’t tell he was miserable, if only for the fact that his father would chew him out for it later.

Social media noticed him acquiring a tan before he did himself. One humid evening whilst lying prone on his fancy hotel bed, the ceiling fan going as strong as he could set it and Plagg moaning drowsily on the comforter beside him, Adrien found a particularly embarrassing Instagram photoset where someone had zoomed in on the tan lines on his thighs. He dropped his phone in his urgency to close it.

The summer dragged on.

His friends Facetimed him from Paris every other day, and did their darndest to include him in whatever they were doing. They threw a birthday party for him at the start of August when he was stuck working through it in Marseille. Marinette had cut her hair super short after a kid at a park put gum in it. On the screen, Alya had reached over and messed up the front of it, and when his friends in the background all laughed at Marinette’s indignant squawk, Adrien felt the bridge of his nose prickle dangerously. All of it was so unfair.

Having barely seen his father at all over the summer, Adrien began to seek him out to ask when they’d be flying back to Paris, with no success. September loomed closer and closer like a promise, and the last of the summer air started to disappear as the evenings gradually cooled and the smell of decaying leaves approached. Nino sent Adrien the list of new textbooks needed for their classes, and with barely a week left before the start of term, he was growing anxious and giddy.

On the 29th, Gabriel turned up at his room door unannounced. A thick manilla envelope in his hand was shoved upon Adrien gracelessly. "This is your new curriculum," he said, "and I expect you to have memorized it by Monday when your tutor arrives."

Gabriel turned to go, and Adrien surged forward. "Tutor? Father, when are we returning to Paris? School is starting in a few days, and I-"

His father squinted critically at him. "We aren't returning to Paris for the foreseeable future."

The rest of Adrien's answers came from Nathalie - Marseille was closer to Milan, where the Agreste brand was opening their second major boutique location, and Gabriel was back and forth between the two locations constantly. Adrien's summer promotions were more successful than anticipated. He'd been offered jobs from a considerable number of holiday-focused brands, all based in southern France, and they wouldn't work with him long-distance from Paris. His father had already removed him from his school over the phone. Plagg made a horrified little sound from his shirt pocket. Adrien stared numbly into the middle distance, and felt as though he was falling.

Gabriel bought a condo for them in the second week of September, some ridiculous, lavish thing on the beach that was far too big for just the three of them. When their belongings arrived in a series of large trucks that evening, everything hit Adrien like a bullet train. The reality of not returning to Paris made his chest prickle, ice-cold with terror. As soon as he could escape to his room for the night, Chat Noir was tearing out the window, and into the inky darkness with urgency.

He made it to the cover of a tall tree's branches before the tears properly came.

Adrien didn't want to break the news to his friends. The thought of any of them being disappointed in him killed him inside, but they had to know. When he told them on a video call the next morning, there were cries of rage from everyone - except for Marinette. He watched her face crumple while his heart broke, and she walked out of frame and did not come back for the rest of the call. Chat Noir hadn’t been able to say goodbye to her. She didn’t yet realize she was losing two friends. Adrien felt like garbage.

Chloé, in her usual manner, flew into a rage and got her father on the phone in the background. Nobody in her family had heard anything about Gabriel’s plans, and he watched her become progressively more and more angry as they realized there was nothing she could do about it all. He wished he could express his own frustration as easily as she did hers. The best he could offer her were apologies that meant nothing to anyone.

Ladybug's messages stopped soon afterwards.

The Akuma attacks continued in Paris, less often than before, and for months Adrien watched a short-haired, taller Ladybug swinging through the streets on his news feed, followed closely by Rena Rouge and a blonde bee superhero he didn't recognise. She wasn’t alone, as she’d promised him, and he was glad for it. She wasn't speaking directly to the press anymore, and he knew it was his fault. He hadn't said a proper goodbye to her, either. Had no way to tell her what had happened to her partner. Would she ever know what had happened to him? Was she angry? Worried? Probably both, he decided with shame. Adrien decided to stop checking the news after that.

His friends in Paris continued to Facetime him once a week, to keep him updated on their class and the local news. Rose and Juleka started dating, Marc transferred to another school but still kept in touch, and Alix took up drumming and wouldn’t stop beating on her desk and books during lessons. Adrien let them talk without interrupting. They were the only friendly voices he heard now, after all.

Marinette never returned to those group video calls after he'd first told them all he wasn't coming back. She hadn’t left their group chat, but didn’t post in it anymore. He never saw her in the calls made by the class, either, and he came to understand that she was leaving the room beforehand on purpose.

"Mari is…" Alya started, before trailing off. Her eyes fell dejectedly. "Mari took you leaving the hardest out of all of us. It was weeks before anyone felt normal again, but…"

A pregnant pause. "I don't think Mari ever has. Felt normal, that is."

Adrien wanted to see her. He turned 15, then 16, and she hadn't spoken to him at all since he left. It hurt terribly. He thought of her often, and asked Alya and Nino to pass along his well-wishes, which they promised they did. Chloé was oddly cagey about it all. She’d since cut her hair into a stylish bob, and began appearing in the private video calls with Nino and Alya - Adrien watched them chatter comfortably (well… comfortable for Chloé) and wondered how they’d become such good friends. She refused to discuss Marinette at all, though, falling oddly silent whenever Adrien would bring her up, and swiftly changing the subject soon afterwards.

Adrien had no idea what had happened to Marinette to make _Chloé,_ of all people, concerned for her. The implication was that _they_ were friends now, too, but he found it hard to imagine - they’d still been arguing bi-weekly when he left - but the years had apparently brought some common ground into the mix. Enough to stop his childhood friend from telling him everything, anyway.

"I promise there's good reasons for it, dude," Nino told him, sharing a look with Alya beside him. "They're just… not our reasons to tell you." 

Chloé agreed.

While his schedule had since fallen back into nothing but work, Adrien wondered if life would simply not let him keep happiness for the long run. He occasionally travelled to Nice or Cannes for work, but otherwise, Adrien had been in Marseille for more than three years. Most of the time, he cruised around on autopilot, but in the dead of night, under the safety of his blankets, the terror and the loneliness would creep back into his chest and strangle him until sleep came to rescue him. It was the only place he let himself feel it. It was safer that way, with his misery locked away in his heart until he could be alone and let it shake him apart. 

Nobody else needed to know. He didn't _want_ anyone to know. Adrien knew it was childish to be so hung up over something he couldn't change, but somehow, his moments alone at night felt like small rebellions - proof that things weren't okay, weren't as perfect as he had to pretend during the days. He missed his school. He missed his friends.

"It's proof I'm alive," he told Plagg, voice quiet and muffled behind his hugged, blanketed knees. "I have to get it all out when I can. The sad stuff. Otherwise I won't be able to hide it at work."

Plagg went uncharacteristically silent for a long moment, and then he said, "I wish either of us knew who you're beating yourself up for."

The spring two months before his 18th birthday, Adrien's father suddenly called him into his study to announce that he was headed to Milan on a more permanent basis.

"There is no need for you to accompany me," Gabriel said primly, "Not at this time, in any case. I do still expect you to attend Fashion Week, of course, but I have not yet acquired any work for you in Milan. Therefore-"

Adrien must have made some sort of sound, as his father's eyes flicked briefly up from his desk to peer at him critically. "...therefore, you may consider yourself emancipated."

 _Emancipated._ In theory, it meant he was free, or close to.

"I can return to Paris?" he managed, hands trembling desperately at his sides. Gabriel shuffled a manilla folder out from a stack of documents, his face impassive.

"If you wish. You will remain working under the Agreste label, and I will have the details of your modelling jobs forwarded to you. Paris would certainly be an acceptable location as far as your work is concerned." He opened the folder, turned it towards Adrien on the desk, and slid it forwards. "The details of your updated contract."

Adrien felt as though he wasn't breathing. His voice seemed to come from someone else. He didn’t even look at the document. "So, I can… go back to school? Get a job?"

Gabriel's gaze turned as sharp as his next words. "You have a job," he corrected, "and you will find the proof of that in the bank account created in your name. You will have no need to earn money. As for your education, I will arrange for your enrollment in an appropriate university in Paris. Contact me immediately once you have decided."

"I- I get to _choose?_ "

"Within reason." Gabriel tapped the open envelope with a polished fountain pen. "I expect you to pursue a higher education in line with your work. Read quickly and then sign on the lowermost line."

It wasn't perfect; Adrien was still locked into working for the Agreste brand, and he would be living in some fancy, doubtlessly-huge apartment picked out by his father, but it was so close to what he'd wanted that he didn't care much. He would return to Paris, see his friends - _Ladybug_ \- and beg for their forgiveness for leaving. He could then decide what he wanted to do after that.

The weight of his sudden, newfound freedom was dizzying. His imagination raced wildly ahead of him as he packed a singular suitcase with clothes. He could make plans with his friends, and be able to follow through. Get his own mail, have his own money. There were still Akumas to fight in Paris, but he wouldn't have to sneak out his bedroom window to chase them down anymore. He and Plagg took a moment to just screech at each other in his bathroom afterwards.

Adrien moved like an over-eager child, almost vibrating in place on the train to the airport, breathing heavily behind his face mask with Plagg wiggling against his heartbeat. “Ladybug will forgive you,” his Kwami had assured. “It’s in her nature. Always has been.”

Still, he worried - three years was a long time. Adrien couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d missed his friends’ entire lives, that they wouldn’t know him when they saw him again, or hadn’t missed him nearly as much as he had them.

The flight to Paris was barely over an hour. It felt like agony.

Familiar scenery passed below the plane, and then scrolled past the windows of the bus into the city. Adrien wanted to press his face to the glass. Happiness thrummed through his veins when he eventually disembarked onto the streets he loved. He was finally home.

The address for his new apartment was logged in his phone, but he felt no urgency to go there immediately. The sky was clear, and the air was still reasonably warm. He wanted to re-explore the city, walk past his old school, maybe. He was free, now. He could do that sort of thing, he reminded himself with a private grin. He set off on a lazy stroll towards his childhood neighbourhood. Plagg occasionally peeked out from his shirt pocket, and they shared short, hushed conversation as they moved from store to store.

He was browsing the window display of a bakery when he was distracted by a loud, wordless yell. He turned to look on instinct, ready to sprint for the nearest secluded place to transform in, and was met by a manicured finger pointed in his direction a little ways away down the street. Chloé Bourgeois, on the other end of it, yelled again once he was facing her.

_"You!"_

She sprinted the couple dozen yards between them and flung herself into his arms at the final few. His suitcase clattered over behind him. Chloé continued to yell into his shirt, clinging to him with force. "You terrible, stupid, awful boy," she sobbed, while he pet her hair and hugged her back just as hard. She was so much smaller than he remembered, and even on her toes as she was, the girl he grew up with stood almost an entire head shorter than him.

“You’re a giraffe,” she sniffed haughtily as they parted, with her eyeliner running faint black streaks down her cheeks and her nose turning red. Her eyes were dangerously watery, as though she would burst into tears again at the slightest provocation.

“You cut your hair,” he said back fondly, pulling down his face mask. That set her off again, and she wailed wordlessly and smooshed her face back into his chest. Adrien chuckled. Chloé really hadn’t changed much since they were children. It made his heart warm fondly, easing some of his worry.

In the direction Chloé had come from, there was a second yell. He raised his head to see Alya, now whooping wildly, and a tall boy he didn't recognise at her side.

Adrien was not prepared to be seeing his friends so soon. He figured he'd have to let them know and organise a meeting first, and he'd been rehearsing what he was going to say to them since he boarded the plane in Marseille. When Alya half-skipped up to him and hooked him around the head with one strong arm, Chloé still clinging to him, he laughed joyfully and had nothing at all to say. Just let the happiness balm the scars around his heart. After a while of hugging each other tightly, Alya held him at arm's length and said, "God, you're so tall! It's awful!" and Chloé snorted wetly in assent. "Though still not as tall as-"

Everything came to an abrupt halt as Alya turned back to face the boy she'd been standing with, and promptly stopped talking mid-sentence. Chloé stiffened against him. Adrien looked at the other guy, who hadn't moved from his original place several paces down the sidewalk, and felt an odd tingling at the back of his skull. "Shit," Alya swore softly.

The guy had black hair, swept in a neat wave at the front, and he was built like an athlete, lithe and toned where his forearms were visible under the rolled sleeves of his v-neck. Pale skin, pierced ears, neatly sculpted eyebrows drawn together to complete a look of terror and confusion. The tingling intensified - Adrien felt like he should recognise this person, and he stared stupidly for a few more heartbeats before he realized.

Those eyes, bright and infinitely blue. He'd never seen fear in them before like he was now.

A name came to his tongue, but it felt somehow wrong for who he was looking at, so different from what he remembered. For a reason he couldn't explain, Adrien knew he shouldn't say the name out loud. Instead, he took a half step towards the person who was once his best friend, and this seemed to set him off - he turned on his heel and began striding down the street, away from the group.

"Marin, wait!" Alya called after him, hesitating by Adrien, before shooting him an apologetic look and hurrying off in the same direction.

 _Marin_. Adrien stared after them in shocked silence. Chloé shook his arm lightly. "Don't look so dumbstruck," she admonished with no bite. "Come on, let's go sit somewhere. I've gotta catch you up on some things." 

He followed her silently. They sat down at a quiet café once she'd fixed her make-up, and Chloé began to tell him things he'd been left out of. The unspoken secret his friends had kept from him all along - why _Marinette_ never showed up on video calls, never posted in the group chat - it was because Marin had asked them not to tell him. He was hurt for all of half a second before Chloé said, "He didn't know how you'd take it," and Adrien felt horrible for thinking only of his own feelings.

He knew what being transgender was, of course. Nobody who used social media stayed ignorant of it for long. He'd never met anyone who was transgender, never had to apply the concept to his own life. He was at a loss for how he should respond at first.

"Did he think," he asked slowly, "that I'd-"

"Maybe, yeah." Chloé sipped her latte and gave him a stern look. "You wouldn't, though."

"Of course not!"

She hummed, and Adrien supposed he'd said what she expected him to, because the hardness faded from her face. They talked about school then, what it had been like to graduate without him. Adrien told her a little about Marseille. She didn't ask much. Three years had done very little to change the fact that they'd grown up together since birth, and she knew what his sadness looked like from a distance. "Of course it was terrible," Chloé said bluntly, "you didn't get to see me in three years."

He grinned. "You could have come to visit _me_ , you know." He flicked a crumpled-up sugar packet in her direction, and she deflected it without effort.

"Oh, I tried," Chloé sniffed. "Many times. Your father wouldn't have it. Said you weren't to be disturbed, that the brand was far too busy and you were booked to the neck." A snort escaped from behind her cup. "Not that being busy was anything new for you, but it didn't used to stop me from seeing you." Adrien just turned his teaspoon over and over on his saucer, and chewed the inside of his cheek. He supposed he wasn't surprised nobody had told him that Chloé was making efforts to see him, not with everything else considered.

"I guess you didn't want to disappoint me," he sighed after a while. Chloé's eyes softened, and her hand came to cover his on the spoon.

"I didn't want to get your hopes up when I knew your _asshole_ father would shoot them down." Her low, ugly emphasis on the word 'asshole' forced a surprise laugh from him, and she smirked. "Speaking of the asshole, how on earth did you finally escape him?"

In the end, they spent two whole hours catching up. Chloé's hand didn't leave his until the street lights came on, and they parted ways outside the café. "Don't worry about Marin," she said, patting him on the shoulder. "He'll come to you when he's ready to talk." After Adrien promised to meet up with her again soon, he watched her walk away, and remarked on how much age had mellowed her out. _'Age, a_ _nd maybe some new friends.'_

His heart was lighter than it had been in years - but below the joy was a small knot of worry, regardless. According to her, Marin was afraid of rejection, as though Adrien would want nothing to do with him anymore. The thought of never again being friends with someone who was once so close to him made him feel sick.

 _'Never,'_ he decided, _'I would never do that to a friend.'_

He only hoped he got the chance to say as much to Marin soon.

**Author's Note:**

> [CM on twitter](https://twitter.com/hawthornss) // [Stella on twitter](https://twitter.com/stellaviatorii)
> 
> come talk to us, if ya nasty.


End file.
